March 16, 2004
England "awash" in illegal ivory?
Ivory is being sold illegally in high streets across Britain, with the world's largest antique market in London "awash with it", an investigation found.From the Independent, with other writeups at the BBC and Evening Standard (which concentrates particularly on Portobello).Yesterday's report on a study by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) came just days before British officials are to fly to Geneva to discuss re-opening a legal international ivory trade. Only ivory dated to before 1947 can be sold under British law, but the survey by IFAW found that not a single trader they spoke to could prove the age of the ivory they were selling. . .
Investigators, who found thousands of items on sale illegally in antique shops and markets in six towns across the country, say that the trade is out of control. Instead of providing proof of age documents required by law, traders relied on their "expert" knowledge and many sellers offered to write receipts with a supposed date of manufacture of more than 100 years old. London's Portobello Road, the world's largest antiques market, was found to be awash with dubious products.
Ivory was also found being sold illegally via internet auctions and dealers from Australia, Canada, China and the US also offered to sell ivory illegally to IFAW investigators, with some forging documents to aid sales.
The whole issue of illegal ivory is quite frustrating for antique dealers, who often have to jump through impossibly small hoops over genuinely old pieces, only to see their markets invaded by a flood of new-made "reproductions" hawked with no apparent concern for the Ps and Qs. As we have noted before, it's been many a year since Portobello was the hub of antiques trading that it once was. Sure, it may now draw enormous crowds of gawkers (which may be the justification for the label, "world's largest antique market"), but the majority of articles on offer are far from antique, with many not even old.
Posted by David on March 16, 2004 1:48 PM
Descend the food chain a few links and use Tagua nuts (sustainable "vegetable ivory") instead:
For over two hundred years vegetable ivory has been used by ivory carvers in the making of netsuke, dice, dominoes,and chess pieces. Other uses found were cane and umbrella handles, pipes, mah-jongg tiles, sewing needle cases and the fine art of scrimshaw. Religious figurines were carved as were many toys. In the late eighteen hundreds up through World War II this ivory nut was used to make some of the finest buttons in the clothing industry. Some were even used on United States Army uniforms.For close to eighty years the ivory nut was a commodity of global importance and factories on three continents used to manufacture articles of utility and luxury.
Posted by: Peter Shriner on March 16, 2004 5:13 PM
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